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Rezwan wrote: What’s up with the badinage (cussing), and why is this under social marketing?

It should be under “contenders” or “weird science.” I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and put it under contenders for now.

I was mainly interested in the fact that they seem to have no problem to keep emiting shares. Note they already emited for about half a million dollars which funded their initial experiments during the 1980s. Also, it seems there is no problem for a private person to invest in them.

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Breakable wrote: This is ****** crazy techno-babble and pseudo-science. How do i buy stock?
[Such language. – Moderator]

You just subscribe. You get voting rights and a newsletter. I’ll let you know what is decided on the next shareholders meeting 😉

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Aeronaut wrote: I don’t know about the theory- didn’t read every word on the page. We’ve discussed ball lightning fusion here somewhere, and I’ve seen this idea look better, more credible, every year. The page looks credible and the proposed plant looks large enough to get serious investor attention. Now, about Dutch investment law, I’m clueless.

I guess it’s pretty flexible ’cause i just bought 1 share 🙂

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Rezwan wrote: In any case, whatever the jargon, “by the ballot or the bullet, by the bible or the gun,” this endeavor needs more than patience. It needs steady, committed cash flow. Less overselling. More underselling and over-funding. A nice thick margin of error. Logistics. Supply line. Tommy Lee Jones coordinating an investor hunt.

Sure. But tommy is getting weary, and this is just no country for old men.

It seems LPP+FFS are being disruptive here, in more ways than one. Not ONLY is the goal highly visionary, also the methods employed so far in reaching that goal are, in my view, unprecedented. Democratization of venture capital, an open, shared vision, without loosing scientific integrity. What you may be looking at here could be nothing less than the future of human enterprise.

Of course, also here, “you have some serious technical challenges to overcome”. In terms of organization you’re in infancy stage, and there is a very real risk of outrunning oneself. (I definitely agree with the need to “undersell”). So obviously, you’re not there yet, and it seems that it’s not easy to generate a steady cashflow, where it is all too easy to generate too much “noise”. Yet it seems to me that FFS is already becoming creative in finding ways of keeping control without loosing (too much) transparency.

But just imagine the pay-off if this proves to work out in the end: your funding, public awareness, evangelization all highly distributed, crowdsourced… Unprecedented. In this scenario, showing your set-backs only helps: it increases the believability, and engages people more (or adds to the entertainment value if you want to look at it that way).

Concerning the ownership model. Look at google: all they are selling is human attention (ads). Maybe you should do the same. Why not make a modest start with this by running google ads on your site? Personally I would invest in nothing more than partial ownership of the site, and the brand “FFS”. So *not* the intellectual property of the machine itself (which i think should be open-sourced anyway).

This promises immediate return on investment in terms of ad-revenue the moment that feasibility is demonstrated. To me, this would already justify substantial investment.

There’s no way that your organization is going to manage to build these things, quickly enough, all by yourself anyway. But if you open-source the construction plans, and provide an online forum for bringing together supply and demand, questions and answers, provide a technical knowledge base, a component supplier database (add revenue!) etc. your brand will quickly rise in value as it represents a valuable source of information (in the “google” sense of the word).

After the democratization of information though the internet, we can now start to democratize the physical world (power utilities). This will put the responsibility back where it belongs (i.e.: where it hurts), and re-empower people to take back control of their own environment and life support systems on a much smaller scale than the big organizations that hold sway in this moment.

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The next generation of solid state ultra capacitors seems just around the corner. For years now the rumors have been seeping into the blogs (http://theeestory.com/). The patent (applications), the apparent involvement of Lockheed Martin and ARPA… Now imagine if FFeasibility is demonstrated the next year, and at the same time the world would see the first ultracapacitor with power densities rivaling the best of today’s batteries; that would be a very timely arrival indeed…

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That’s the scary part, Emmet. Who picks the values, curriculum, and so on? Will most people ever know who’s shaping their thoughts and or their offspring’s thoughts? Not likely, imo.

No reason to be too pessimistic in this respect, Aeronaut. Education is a key ingredient here. The democratization of knowledge through the internet is another. Of course… spreading propaganda like this little movieclip is also made much easier through the internet. But at least it levels the playingfield. FFS can now post a video response to this clip and so get the discussion started on youtube. What can we do more to promote our cause? In the end people will have to make up their own minds. Do you support the dark side of centrally controlled and distributed power (and condemn yourself to wearing that awful, androgenic attire)? Or do you support the rebelion of distributed empowerment (and get to wear one of those cool, colorful FFS shirts)? 😉

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vansig wrote:

how hard is it to breed fissile material using a (modified) plasma focus device?

for that, you need lots of neutrons. DPF isn’t an appreciable neutron source, but that might depend on what fuel you use
I came across this, admittedly old, paper that seems to propose using the energetic ion beam directed at a spallation target as a neutron source:
http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/110000011602/en/
More recent research seems to focus on subcritical fission reactors which can burn long lived actinides. So this would actually be a great options for disposing of nuclear waste. No idea if a plasma focus is powerful enough to be used directly here… They need particles with energies approaching the GeV range:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf35.html
This BTW seems to be related to older threads on this forum:
https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/216

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vansig wrote: Let’s not bother with that, and instead look to winning messages: those ways of thinking, and arguments that will make mainstream fusion researchers stop dismissing DPF as a side show

Heartily seconded. Let’s keep the atmosphere positive. Lest we scare away all the serious knowledgeable people. Rezwan: please contain your passion, people are very well able to appreciate the fact that this is an open forum. As in: open to *all* voices. For the occasional scientist dropping by this might actually be a breath of fresh air, a welcome diversion from the mutual praise community they find themselves locked in, professionally. 😉

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Bottom line should be no realistic threat to industrial or neighborhood health not already faced by transformer substations and chemical plants or detergent manufacturers.

That, at least, is good news. One concern remains though: how hard is it to breed fissile material using a (modified) plasma focus device?

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Rezwan, imagine the furniture savings and productivity gains of equipping nearly half a million workstations with those podiums.

Not to mention the savings in color dye, once we strip our youth from having an individual personality, and dress them accordingly.

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It’s an entertaining blog. A little fatalistic at times (especially when the writer asks you to print hardcopy anticipating the imminent, unavoidable collapse of civilization which will of course mean we can no longer rely on the internet 😉 ). But it’s positive that the writer is trying to draw younger generations’ attention to all sorts of ecological issues.

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The Japanese research story that Brian linked to above doesn’t seem to think that impact is going to be a show-stopper.

Do they also say why not? 😉

Tethers.com uses a hybrid approach similar to launching and recovering small planes from a blimp. And unless they use a rigid tether, I don’t understand how their tether could restore the momentum transferred to the payload.

Now that you mention it, i must admit that when i posted the link i hadn’t the foggiest idea how their system really works. 8-/

So i took a second look at it: they certainly don’t seem to be using a rigid tether, instead it is two masses connected by the tether that form a rotating two-body system. Then when they grab something at the base of the rotation and let it go at the apex momentum gets transfered from this two-body system to the payload. They say they can boost the orbit of the facility by simply riding the earth’s magnetic field by running a large current through the tether itself.

Now i wonder if another way to boost the facility orbit would be for the facility to climb the tether when it is at the base of the rotation. Maybe this way momentum can be transfered back into orbital velocity while shortening the cable (and the time it is exposed to debris).

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If Iran manages something like this the positive fall-out might serve to reconnect them back a little bit to the democratic world. Maybe it will help also to break somewhat the wave of islamofobia that is sweeping across Europe. I feel sick to my stomach to see the amount of xenofobic, reactionary BS that is poured out by my fellow countrymen on a daily basis. It seems to be everywhere, nowadays, this brainrot. One may overhear the most flagitious conversation in the train, or stumble accross the most venomous, misguided blogs, or, worse, have friends suddenly come out and say something so incredibly mutton-headed that it leaves you gasping for air. And of course, our politicians have not failed to pick up on this, either.

Seeing that something this positive can come from the muslim world might help to open their eyes. (I know, but hope springs eternal.)

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Now imagine having to move the cable bottom to avoid each and every one of those little dots, simultaneously. And those dots are all moving! Clearly it’s an impossible task. But if you don’t do it, your cable takes impacts. So how long can the cable survive under such bombardment? Not long, is the guess here. And the problem is only going to get worse as time goes on and more and more junk ends up in orbit.

This really seems like a show-stopper for the pace elevator. Also its seems a practical space-elevator system needs some active daming to keep it from vibrating due to winds, tidal forces, etc. That all seems to make it highly impractical.

These guys have an interesting alternative concept:
http://www.tethers.com/LaunchAssist.html

How about changing their concept slighty: make the tether active at the top by employing a FF driven electric reel. This means you add additional lifting capacity by shortening the cable as the payload is ascending (a bit like an ice-dancer drawing the arms closer the the body to pick up angular velocity).Of course you can only draw the tether in slightly before reaching appex, but it still might have an effect. If it doesn’t then at least it is important to keep retracting the ribbon after launch in order to minimize the time of exposure of the tether to impact from space-debris.

In between launches, FF propulsion can be used to restore the orbit of the tether facility.

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That would be so cool. If we could have a space elevator! Of course that would be: the future of mankind/life on earth (in the galaxy? universe?) hanging by a nanofiber thread? 😉

Still, why not! And, at the same time, let’s do the directed panspermia thing, as an insurance policy.

By the way, is there such a thing as an “active” space elevator? I imagine the cable having thrusters at regular intervals to relieve the stress on the cable. FF would be perfect for this.

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